VI.
The law reviving the three years’ term of military service was the immediate answer of the Republican Government to the bill demanding such great sacrifices from the German taxpayer, in order that the crushing superiority of the Imperial armies might be assured. When all doubts as to the passing of the French bill were removed, Germany’s first thrill of surprise at this counter-blast was turned to genuine indignation—an indignation that would have been comical if the issues at stake had not been so serious. To read the Berlin papers, one would have thought that only the German Empire had the right to arm in self-defence, and that France could claim no such privilege. In certain drawing-rooms, the revival of the three years’ service was spoken of as a challenge to Germanism! A password went the round of the newspapers: dates were to be confused, and the French bill was to be represented as earlier than the German. This flagrant lie was blazoned abroad by the whole Press, with the exception of the Socialist organs, as a damning accusation against France. Dr. T. Schiemann, in the Kreuzzeitung, went so far as to maintain that the three years’ term had been forced upon M. Poincaré by the Tsar, during the visit of the President (then Foreign Minister) to St. Petersburg in the previous year. It was the price exacted by Russia for her military aid and for the upkeep of the alliance.
Whether this conscious incitement of Teuton jingoism would lead to grave results was a question that, in the eyes of a foreign observer, depended on the length of the simultaneous Parliamentary debates over the bills in Paris and Berlin. The journalistic attacks of the Germans were answered in a tone of equal asperity by the French Press. Should any regrettable incidents arise in the course of the debates, would the Republican Cabinet have enough control over French public opinion, would the Imperial Government have enough mastery over the Pan-Germans, to be able to find a prompt and friendly solution? No one has forgotten the stir caused in France, the distrust that seized hold of the public mind, when in the preceding April a Zeppelin, after flying some way over the frontier, unexpectedly came down at Lunéville. The brawl between French students and German tourists at Nancy had proved more difficult to smooth over. Fortunately, the Barthou Cabinet had not lost its head, but had managed, by rapid action, to forestall the demand for explanations and apologies which a very rabid journal, the semi-official Kölnische Zeitung, advised Herr von Jagow to demand from the Republican Government. Despite the perils of the situation, the summer supervened without bringing a catastrophe. The French and German bills were passed in a sultry political atmosphere, which already gave promise of a storm.
The malignity of William II.’s Government towards France, and its indulgence towards those who sowed bad feeling in the country, as if to reap a harvest of hate, were nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the persistent legend regarding the cruel treatment of German soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. Nothing would have been easier than officially to deny these alleged barbarities, as well as the reports of press-gang methods employed by agents of that famous corps in Germany—in short, to silence the canting protests to which its existence gave rise. Not only did the Government omit to do this, but it even tolerated, until a formal complaint was laid, the production in a Berlin theatre of a play in which the French uniform of the legionaries was held up to ridicule. One might have compared the Foreign Legion to a poisoned lancet, kept by the authorities for the purpose of envenoming, when it pleased them, their intercourse with France.